Re: [SAGE] Looking for call management/helpdesk software

[Jim <jimd@starshine.org>]

On Thu, Jan 09, 2003 at 04:39:14PM -0800, Jim Hickstein wrote:
>>Does Debian have anything like Kickstart (or Jumpstart)? That's long been
>>the killer app for my choice of OS. Upgrading without downtime is good,
>>but automated rebuilding is more critical (especially in academia, where
>>downtime isn't nearly as expensive).
 
> Hi, Josh!
 
> I'm not familiar with this, but I think it exists, and it's fairly highly 
> developed.   Jim Dennis gave a quick talk about this at the last BayLISA 
> meeting (but I wasn't paying attention -- sorry, Jim.)  You might want to 
> start your research with "PXE".  This seems to be the PC-type thing that 
> can boot over the network while still under control of the ROM.

 Sadly Debian doesn't have Kickstart.
 It's certainly possible to have PXE start a shell script (from a 
 small boot/root initrd image, optionally adding NFS (possible readonly)
 and then just roll your own with sfdisk (scriptable fdisk) and tar.

 Once you untar a basic Debian installation you can do the rest using
 shell scripting, too.  Even most of the hardware detection stuff is
 possible after the fact.

 I've considered modifying kickstart (Anaconda) to handle Debian.  The 
 parts I really want are the automatic partitioning and the basic 
 environment.  I'm sure it could be refactored to make the distribution 
 installation modular.    It's just that I'd have to fuss so much around
 the UI!


--
Jim Dennis